We have all read numerous times that the 17 & 24 TS-E lenses ( or any ultra wide) are brilliant lenses for architecture. I don’t think they are, most of the time I see them as necessary evils. They let the scene be captured but there is no need to accept their exaggerated view when it looks wrong because we have Ps to regain control of the image.
Hi Paul,
That's not the fault of the lenses. It is caused, assuming correct keystoning correction, by projection of the image on a flat plane
and viewing that result from too far away
and from the wrong position (not from the virtual center of projection).
The projection near the edge of the image circle on a flat plane will seemingly stretch the image more the closer it gets to the edge, and when we view the output from the wrong position (too far away) we will 'enhance' the stretched sensation. However, if we were to view the output from below and from very (uncomfortably) close distance, everything would look perfectly normal.
So, to cope with our 'wrong' viewing conditions, we can a.) under-correct the keystone correction, and/or b.) compress the image in the shift direction, and/or c.) use a larger output size.
A Raw converter like Capture One, typically under-corrects the keystone correction by a user definable percentage, and offers the option to compress it by changing the aspect ratio. Pano stitching software, which may offer a higher quality result than a wider angle lens, allows to reposition the center of projection (even on a single image), and use an offset and or aspect ratio changes to influence the apparent 'look' of the resulting image.
Cheers,
Bart